tour 11

after pat and gino's steaks, matt took me to a joint that makes "veggie" cheesesteaks. a pile of wheat gluten on a white bun... not my favorite. think i'll stick with vegetables, not some weird vegetable protein that looks and feels like meat. ugh.

went to philly art museum... rocky statue out front. people in line 10-deep to have photo taken with "the rock"... i wondered if people think the statue is art or the film itself is art... what is the reason for placing outside the art museum? and if the film itself is considered art, what about part II, where he faces down mister t (his name in the film is "clubber lang")?

i would argue that part IV is so awful it exists as art... at least half the film is music video montage sequences. dolph lundgren steals the show. and the robot inside rocky's house that serves them martinis.

so we went in the museum and felt overwhelmed of course... van gogh, pisarro, braque/ my favorite was the shaker furniture. amazing. they recreated a full homestead.

after, headed back to matt's for short break and then back downtown... walked by washington's house replica and replica of his slave quarters and the real liberty bell and the real first national bank and some other buildings that have some significance but i'm not sure what, and a deli called "benny franklin's" that showed ben franklin chowing a sandwich and somehow that felt just as significant as any of these other old buildings, if not more. more relevant to me anyway than somebody's slave quarters, even if that somebody was named "washington" and he's six feet twenty and weighs a fucking ton.

went back to matt's and chilled for a bit, headed over to nearby brewery on baltimore for overpriced homebrew and watched some cool girl punk music and met the old haunts, with whom we were playing the next night in pittsburgh... bought their zine called "starfucker" which has a super cool interview with raymond pettibon... for the uninitiated, you can start here.

left shortly cuz beer just too pricey, headed back to house, watched "rushmore." bill murray = amazing amazing. i suppose i'm a sucker for that old shakespearian trick, a play within a play... in this case, several plays within a film. wes anderson structures things so cool too, at least here, with use of acts and chapters and drawing curtains providing aesthetic unity... sometimes anderson is too precious for me, but it's a feeling i'll gladly live with. i'm just happy there is a director out there crafting a body of work that people can discuss (p.t. anderson's doing it too. can you think of anybody else?)

then all everyone else went to sleep and i watched "lost in translation" and i think bill murray is even funnier in that film... he is just so amazing in that movie. my lord. and the soundtrack is perfection; also scarlett johansson's sadness.

woke early the next day, coffees to the ready, bought and drunk within minutes of consciousness, then onto the highway, west six hours to pittsburgh.

with several hours to kill, we found a bleak public park along some of the rivers and spied the neighboring del monte and heinz headquarters. i think i prefer heinz, although del monte had a hell of a sign-- a gold tomato about twenty feet tall. this was all on the riverfront and we followed the river over to the pirates' stadium, stopping to admire statue of roberto clemente. moment of silence then over to garfield artworks for the evening's show.

we arrived and said hi to manny, the inscrutable dude running garfield. one minute, you think he's gonna punch you, next minute you're best pals; i like feeling off-guard that way and we walked to the corner store together. show got a nice write-up in pittsburgh city paper, first write-up of the tour...they called us "trippy." here's the full write up:

"
The trippy Texas outfit known as Sunset started out as a four-tracked solo project of "Blonde" Bill Baird, then holding down the low notes in the band Sound Team. Now Sunset has developed into a full-fledged exploration of lo-fi walls of sound, vintage-sounding pop melodies, and wry, half-whispered narratives on the debut full-length, Bright Blue Dream. It's lovely, loopy stuff. Sunset's at Garfield Artworks tonight, opening for Olympia, Wa.'s The Old Haunts (on the Kill Rock Stars label, and featuring Bikini Kill's Tobi Vail on drums) with Call Me Lightning, The Mutators and The Modern Creatures.
"

so that was nice, but we had a couple of hours to kill and i asked manny where we could walk and he said "nowhere" because apparently this was a rough rough part of pittsburgh and drugs and their dealers abounded. i did happen to notice several very nicely dressed gents driving a shiny shiny mercedes, yelling at each other in front of the convenience store. so we stuck around, only two people paid admission that evening but we didn't care... things sometimes turn that way when you're launching something, and i consider this project still in its fledgling stage (although it's had a myspace page for two and a half years now, only now getting heavier with shows and releasing music).